Meghalaya celebrates Boxing Day with grand community feasts, charity & camaraderie

Shillong: It’s Boxing Day on Friday, and besides opening boxes full of Christmas gifts, it’s also time for grand community feasts in the predominantly Christian-inhabited Meghalaya.“The day after Christmas, the Feast of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is better known as Boxing Day,” a church elder said.‘Alms boxes’ are placed in every church on Christmas Day, into which worshippers place gifts for the poor of the parish. These boxes are opened on Boxing Day. In fact, all the churches provide clothes and gifts to the needy during Christmas.Irrespective of caste, creed or religious affiliation, people exchanged greetings on Christmas on Thursday in the cosmopolitan hill city and elsewhere in the state.Churches of various denominations throughout the state are organising community feasts, which will continue up to the New Year.“Christmas is a time for sharing and caring for each other and promoting love and peace among all and community feasts bring together everybody in an atmosphere of goodwill and camaraderie,” a woman said while serving local dishes.Called ‘Bam Khana Krismas’ in the Khasi language, these are occasions of great rejoice, when people share food prepared in a common kitchen.Shillong, dotted with churches and chapels, is abuzz with festivities this time of the year, with govt offices, hospitals, private residences, market places, shops and street corners dazzling with fancy lights and parks and other scenic places teeming with friends and families.All decked out, lit up and glittering, the hill city of evergreen pines and exotic orchids has been attracting record number of tourists from several places of the northeast, especially neighbouring Assam, Bengal and other parts of the country, as well as abroad, to regale in the Christmas and New Year festivities.Christmas feasts are also being organised in the Jaintia and Garo Hills regions in the state.Meanwhile, with state govt offices and educational institutions closed for Christmas and New Year, Shillong now is a relaxed hill station of leisure, fun and sunshine, warming up the otherwise chilly wintry days and cold nights.